Sorrow
by skippy67892002
Summary: Post-Storm Doug and Carol deal with their respective losses. Please R and R.


NOTE: I don't own the characters, plot etc of ER, blah blah blah.....

NOTE: This story takes place after the episodes described below:

**_Dr. Doug Ross meets a woman, Joi Abbot, who's son has ALD. Doug steals drugs from a study that his best friend Dr Mark Greene is part of. Mark and Dr Kerry Weaver catch him and ask him not to prescribe narcotics. Doug forges Mark's signature and gets Ricky a PCA machine. He then teaches Joi the code tp the machine and allows her to give Ricky a lethal dose of drugs. Doug is under criminal investigation, when he leaves town, for Seattle but only after his fiancée breaks up with him. _**

_**(Note: That is there for new ER fans and my friends who want to read my writing, but hate ER.)**_

Doug Ross looked at the picture on the wall in his hotel room in The Delgado Inn in Seattle. The snow covered cars along the roadside in the photograph made him yearn for the home he had just left: Chicago's County General Hospital. He wished that the view outside wasn't an empty, clean path with trees encircling it, but a snowy, smog-covered, dirt-filled street packed with cars just like the picture that now seemed to taunt him. Just 13 hours earlier, Doug had left Chicago amidst a first-degree murder investigation into the death of his patient, Ricky Abbott. Doug had helped Joi, Ricky's mother administer a lethal dose of Dilotine. He'd left after a beer on the lake with his best friend Mark Greene. Mark, although betrayed through forgery, by Doug, still had enough passion to let Doug leave with grace and dignity. Doug silently thanked him at that moment he looked at the photograph for that last act of friendship. He saw a couple walk down the baron street, as he turned away for a moment to grab a glass of water from the end table beside him. The blonde, slightly overweight woman looked like his very recently estranged ex-fiancée, Carol Hathaway. He had begged Carol to come with him to Seattle, but she had refused. As much as she loved Doug, she felt betrayed that he had jeopardized her clinic by forging Mark's signature to get a PCA machine from her. She had worked too hard for that clinic and even at the time he had known it. Doug had hurt so many people, including Kerry Weaver, however sadistic he had thought her to be from the time he met her. She and Mark had told him not to administer narcotics, but he had, and their reputations were in need of a boost. Doug groaned. He was tired of this torture session in his brain. Doug felt like he needed a walk. He was hungry and decided to go to dinner at a small café down the road, which had been recommended to him at check-in. He grabbed his wallet and locked his room door.

Carol Hathaway looked wearily out the rear doctor's lounge window at County General. She missed Doug. She wanted him there so badly, but she knew he wasn't ever coming back. He had done too much to get a job here, and he seemed content on staying away when he had thrown his badge on the floor and left Chicago and her life for good. She and Doug had always had a rocky relationship, but it always seemed to last anything. That is until this. Doug Ross had gone way to far this time. When he asked her to go with him to the Northwest of the United States, she wanted so desperately with her heart to say yes, but her logical brain wouldn't let her. She hated that part of herself, especially when it was right, and she knew this time it was. He had hurt Jeannie physically, and Mark, herself, Kerry, and the entire hospital emotionally. What he had done was unforgivable. Carol was thinking about all this, when a voice came from behind her.

"Carol, are you alright?" Mark Greene asked his friend. He knew the answer, but wanted to make sure Carol knew it for herself.

"Yeah," Carol said, turning around abruptly. "I just think about life when I see snow."

Mark could see she was lying. "Carol its Doug right?"

Carol sank down in the chair a next to her. "Mmmhmm," she said a tear in her eye. "God Mark, why did he do it? Why'd he have to hurt us?" Carol really meant why did he hurt her.

"Carol," Mark said, sitting in the chair across from her. "I think he cares too much for kids. Believe it or not, I really think that Doug hurt us inadvertently in order to help a family. And I believe he did." Mark couldn't believe he was defending Doug.

"Really?" she asked.

"Yes, Carol." He said this, surprised himself. "I really do. He had no right to lie, or hurt, but he did. Not on purpose, to help a child."

"But why did he lie?" she asked.

"Because he didn't want to hurt us," Mark said, compassionately.

"But he did." Carol said, again looking out the window, as Mark wrapped his arm around her back.  
  
"It's alright Carol. You'll get through this..."


End file.
